monday links

“On my business card, I am a corporate president. In my mind, I am a game developer. But in my heart, I am a gamer.” – Satoru Iwata, GDC 2005

Yes, we know, this has almost nothing to do with Sonic. But Satoru Iwata was one of the most influential people in the game industry, and I don’t think there’s any executive that you could find more lovable than him. And because of how much we admire him and the games that he made possible, it would feel wrong not to honour him somehow. So instead of your irregular Monday Links, we bring you these stories about him. Directly to you.

Yup, the site went down for a week. The effects of which were catastrophic. For instance, the last three months of Monday Links were suddenly removed from the internet and nobody even seems to be able to remember them. A very strange occurrence that’s in no way an unfunny excuse for my laziness.

Anyway, while I was busy watching a 274+ episode anime, the other Sonic Retro staff launched a new front page. I also watched an anime about cute girls making anime. So in short, we all made some progress.

We haven’t heard of the big new Sonic game this year yet (or if there is one at all), so of course rumours have started popping up. The most credible one being Sonic Mach 2, which is probably a working title. Might just be nothing like a small spin-off game, but we’ll see I guess [Also fans annoying Iizuka by asking him about it]

So we all know that Hollywood loves to revive old movies and stuff. I mean, they’re even making two new Ghostbusters movies. But recently they’ve also started making more movies about games. There’s even going to be a movie about video games with Adam Sandler and Peter Dinklage. And as you probably already know, even Sonic’s gonna get a movie now. One that might be PG-13. So yeah, Hollywood is crazy.

And this is where I forget where I was going with this and instead made this Sonic doodle. Anyway, links.

So I don’t feel like writing anything with any real substance this week and I’ve been watching stuff lately so I’ll just recommend some random stuff: the Speed Racer movie, Death Parade, JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure, the Three Flavours Cornetto trilogy, Star Trek (the J.J. Abrams one), a rewatch of Cowboy Bebop, the Sonic OVA, and Dragon Ball Kai. Also 30 Rock.

I did it you guys. I got Monday Links to actually be a weekly thing for every Monday of a month. I checked and this is something that hasn’t been achieved since 2010 when Slingerland was doing this thing. This is something that I’ve tried very, very, veeeery hard to achieve since I did my first of these back in 2013. And really I probably wouldn’t have done it without Bartman3010 starting it up again. Speaking of which, why isn’t he doing Monday Links anymore? I bet he’s probably doing “more important stuff” and “chasing his dreams” like learning how to make games for the Nvidia Tegra. Pfft.

Oh man, you guys, we usually don’t do leaks by anonymous tipsters but this was just too good to pass up. Rayman is gonna be in the upcoming Sonic Runners! This tipster gave us this piece of promotional art in which Rayman is shown running alongside Sonic, Tails and Knuckles. What made this leak especially convincing is that just like Sonic, Rayman consists of a re-used model from previous games with black lines around the edges.

It makes sense as well. Just like Sonic will have, Rayman has had a couple of “endless runner” games that aren’t really endless but actually have stages. These games, Rayman Jungle Run and Fiesta Run, were pretty darn good. So hopefully they’re an indication of how good Sonic Runners will be. And who knows, maybe we’ll see additional guest characters from other mobile games as well, like maybe Mega Man!

Okay look I was gonna make this Monday Links thing more about Sonic but then Atlus put out this amazing trailer for Persona 5 and oh gosh it looks so good. The style and the graphics and the characters and everything oh gosh. It’s like they took the swag levels of drunk Charlie Tunoku from Persona 4 and multiplied it by like ten or one hundred and then also made him introverted by day and oh gosh the game just looks great.

Nobody knows if Monday Links is alive or not. Sometimes is just kinda pops up again, while at other times it just kinda seems to have died into obscurity. Some wonder if Monday Links was ever truly alive for the past year or so, as it only sometimes kinda popped up and then disappeared again for who knows how long. Others just don’t care cause really why would you you probably normally don’t even look at the front page and just go straight to the wiki or forums you jerk. >:(

Anyway, these Monday Links articles usually takes quite a bit of time to make so I’m gonna trim them up a bit from now on. From now on it’ll focus more on Sonic and less on SEGA in general. If you want to see the latest SEGA news and cool SEGA features, you should go visit SEGAbits. Those guys do a pretty damn good job covering all things SEGA and really I’m just wasting time linking all the stuff they put up there when you can just visit their site.

No, Sonic’s not going to be mobile and PC only. SEGA of America is gonna have a huge re-structure but that’s not gonna affect any Sonic games Sonic Team or whatever has in production. SEGA is gonna push mobile and PC games harder (which they’ve already been doing), but they’re not gonna stop making console games. It’s still bad news of course, but not as bad as some make it out to be. [Not really Sonic related but it’s a rumor that needs to be cleared up]